In 2005, 10 years after the horrible genocide when members of the Hutu majority brutishly killed around one million Tutsis, I visited Rwanda for the first time. I was on my way to backpack from Rwanda via Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Sambia, Zimbabwe, Botsuana to Cape Town. Once in Rwanda, my wife and I did what the (only few – back then) tourists did: We took a matatu to Ruhengeri at the foothills the majestic Virunga volcanoes. In front of us, in a truly dramatic natural setting at the heart of an amphitheatre formed by the eroded volcano cones of Sabyinyo, Gahinga and Muhavura, lay the habitat of the mountain gorillas. We started our hike, always uphill, a soldier with a huge panga cleared our way through lush forest, where there had been just minutes before no way. Higher and higher we went, and I remember that I thought that I would never make it. Then after five hours of climbing the forest cleared, wafts of mist in turn were clearing and blocking the view, here they were: Gorillas in the Mist. Magic!

On my second visit 11 years later, thanks to efficient governing (my Kenyan friends called it a benevolent dictator and wished for the same – another philosophical question…), Rwanda had become a decently developed country. I met Dana, a photographer, on the occasion of a Goethe Institute exhibition. Whether Dana was a Hutu or a Tutsi did none of the young urban elites in Kigali bother. However, I still felt the palpable phobia of a possible return of the hatred. It constantly struck me during my two-week-visit: In Rwanda, on a continent were laughter and banter are essential lifeblood, nobody did laugh wholeheartedly. 

11 years after my encounter with the famous Gorillas in the Mist, I used a free weekend to do another hike, this time around the hillside village of Colline Gakoro, not far from the volcanoes: I share my steep path with a bunch of children. Only after a 45 minute steep climb the children reach their portent’s homes. Each of them is schlepping a heavy yellow water can almost as big as their own stature. No wonder that parents are happy about their many children who fetch water, herd cattle and who will later support their elders in the absence of a pension scheme.